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100 Years in the First Division: the absolute complete story following Arsenal’s promotion in 1919
The anniversaries today…
25 October 1919: Arsenal 1 Bradford C 2. League debut for Fred Pagnam, the man who refused to be corrupted by Liverpool’s match fixing exploits. Arsenal then went the next six games unbeaten.
25 October 1924: Debut for Jimmy Brain v Tottenham in front of 51,000 at Highbury. He scored when the ball hit his head and knocked him out. He later became a player and coach at Tottenham but eventually ended up as an Arsenal scout. This was the first post-war game in which Arsenal beat Tottenham.
25 October 1926: Denying the “WM” thesis that Charlie Buchan claimed he and Chapman invented in 1925, the Times looked back on the first year of the new offside rule and concluded it had brought about a “greater looseness in the constructive art of the game,” arguing that “all the fresh formations which were tried last season were unnecessary.” As a result “today every team is far more apprehensive in the matter of defence than used to be the case [with] a tendency to concentrate on defence by half backs and this has meant a weakening in attack.”
25 October 1930: Arsenal 1 West Ham 1 in Arsenal’s first title winning season. It was one of only two games all season at Highbury that kicked off at 3pm, thus giving the lie to the notion of 3pm being the traditional time for Saturday football.
25 October 1941: After a run of seven successive victories in the wartime league Arsenal unexpectedly lost 3-1 away to Watford on this day as wartime duties meant five of the regular team were unavailable. Three players made their debuts, but after this were hardly seen again.
25 October 1952: Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0. The crowd of 63,744 meant that 186,104 paying fans had seen Arsenal’s three home games in October. Of the 8 goals scored in the month Roper got five, Logie two and Lishman one.
25 October 1958: Mike Tiddy transferred to Brighton. It was at Brighton that he became known as a Methodist lay-preacher and apparently because of his role as a preacher, he never played Christmas and Easter fixtures.
25 October 1969: Sammy Nelson debut in a 0-0 draw with Ipswich. He went on to play 245 league games for the club plus 10 appearances as a sub, and scored 10 league goals
25 October 1975: Arsenal beat Middlesbrough 2-1 with just 23,591 in the crowd. The press called the visitors’ approach “organisation” – resulting in “a game so dull that it made potato picking seem like profound rapture.” 18 year old Stapleton however brought much needed relief.
25 October 1977: The third round of the League Cup and a surprising attendance of 40,749 witnessing Arsenal beat Southampton 2-0. Southampton used the 10 man defence tactic which worked until after 75 minutes of tedium Rix floated in a cross, Holmes handled in the penalty area for no reason at all, and Brady took the penalty.
25 October 1980: Pat Rice’s last game in a 1-1 away draw with Sunderland. In his time at Arsenal as a player he won the league and two FA Cups, plus further honours as subsequently he became assistant to Arsene Wenger.
25 October 1999: Bergkamp is reported as saying of Kanu, “The skills he has got, the moves he makes, are something you like to watch and learn from. I watch him in training and it is a joy.”
25 October 2011: Arshavin and Park scored in the 2-1 league cup win over Bolton. Muamba scored for Bolton. Arsenal lost in the next round to Manchester City.
25 October 2014: Arsenal beat Sunderland 0-2 away with two goals from Alexis. It was part of a run of 17 league and cup games between the clubs leading up to Sunderland’s relegation in 2017 in which Sunderland only won one game.
25 October 2016: A surprisingly large crowd of 59,865 saw Arsenal beat Reading in the League Cup 4th round 2-0 with both goals from Oxlade-Chamberlain. Up and coming players in the line up included Jenkinson, Maitland-Niles, Holding, Elneny, Perez, Iwobi and Reine Adelaide. Willock and Zelalem came off the bench.
25 October 2018: Sporting Clube Portugal 0 Arsenal 1 in the Europa League. It was Arsenal’s 11th consecutive win in the League, League Cup and Europa League.
25 October 2020: Arsenal were defeated 0-1 at home by Leicester with a very strange VAR decision ruling out an Arsenal goal for Xhaka’s offside, when he was clearly not interfering with play. It began to be clear that Arsenal were adopting a new approach which involved cutting back on tackling although it was taking time to make it work.
